NYU Opens Door to Recognizing Graduate Assistants' Union

An affiliate of the auto workers' union, actually

For eight years, hundreds of graduate students at New York University have been at war with the school's president, John Sexton, over his 2005 decision to stop recognizing the labor union that once represented more than 1,000 of the university's graduate teaching and research assistants.

But N.Y.U. and the union for those graduate assistants, an arm of the United Auto Workers union, announced on Tuesday that they had reached an agreement under which the university would again recognize and bargain with the U.A.W. if a majority of graduate assistants vote in favor of having a union.